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The village of Liboreiro is set high up on the hill just 4km to the east of Góis.
At the end of a winding road up from Góis, the reward on reaching the village is the most spectacular view over the land to the north. The sense of altitude is so great that it has been described as like looking out of an aeroplane! The original track to Liboreiro came up through the villages of Manjão and Vale Moreiro, but that is now used mainly by the goats and their herders.
Notwithstanding the hill, the elderly folk of the village still make their way down to Góis on foot to attend Mass or take produce down to the weekly market. There are fewer of them than there once were, but Liboreiro is becoming a popular place for people to buy a holiday home, looking for the qualities of tranquillity and spaciousness that are to be found here.
At the centre of the village of Liboreiro is an open square with a huge old fig tree, dripping with ripe figs in the late summer. Just a short walk away, a path leads down some steps to a magical spring, surrounded by cool verdant vegetation, where people still come for fresh water.
The settlement of Liboreiro originates from the presence of gold in the hills, and there are several gold mines in the area, dating back to the Bronze Age, although none are active. At the turn of the 20th century the hills round Liboreiro had far fewer trees, and were grazed by goats and sheep. While tending the goats, one of the villagers noticed a shiny rock, and on closer inspection it was found to contain 7 kilos of gold! A few years later another villager, while building a wall, picked up a stone that was unusually heavy and struck it with his hammer. He found it contained 3 kilos of gold. The mines of Sr.ª da Guia nearby were worked for tungsten, and the mines from Vale Pião mostly for tin. The inhabitants of Liboreiro worked in these mines when they were active.
Angelina Martins Alves, an older resident of the village, tells how her father and other men walked to Góis every day to work on the castle’s walls to earn some money to keep their families. They also made their living from their goats, and Angelina went at the age of seven years to Póvoa de Góis to tend the herd of fourteen goats. As she could not count up to more than her age she would answer, when people asked her how many goats she had, “two times seven”!
In Liboreiro they used to cultivate maize, and as they had no mill,a miller from Góis with two donkeys and a cart came to collect the maize of the village and take it for grinding. Behind Liboreiro several tracks lead up on to the mountain, where it is possible to walk or ride for hours with only the birds for company, - or be lucky enough to see or hear one of the wild boar that inhabit the area. |
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A little way from the village there is the chapel of Nossa Senhora da Guia, that sits on a plateau. There is a picnic area where the tables are shaded by the branches of a large oak tree and a font provides cool refreshing water. The annual festa is held at the end of the summer, and a ‘magusto’ is held in November, when chestnuts are roasted on a bed of burning pine needles.
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